Review: The Society makes for a fun spooky teen drama

THE SOCIETY

The Society

★★★½

netflix.com.au

90210 meets Lord of the Flies in this fun spooky teen drama. In a world very much like ours – only populated almost exclusively by attractive young white people – a Stepford-ish town has been made uninhabitable by a nauseating stench. Subsequently, all the high school kids are bussed off to camp in the nearby mountains. Or are they? Soon one inexplicable horror is followed by another (poor mobile service, desecration of a church). What on earth is happening? There are a lot of familiar faces – many with serious acting chops – and showrunner Christopher Keyser (Party of Five) knows exactly what he’s doing in this space. The characters are introduced and their place in the hierarchy established without fuss, and this hits its narrative marks with equal precision. Beyond its professionalism, though, The Society – like a lot of shows in the genre – also has a lot of fun with subtext. I’m pretty sure one of our leading ladies is not called Cassandra by accident (just for instance) and the script is rich with allusion, both classical and popular. (The scene where one kid explains the dynamic of The Poseidon Adventure to another is fabulous.) It is also, of course, about the behaviour of human beings under pressure – and discovering just what kind of society emerges here makes for a tantalising prospect.